Keep in the sunlight
by Phoenixfire97
Summary: I lost them both in 24 hours, my Vicky and Layla. The world shifted and never stopped since that day. But there is more to the story then they painted of Victorie, Layla and me, but more of Layla. She could never do that. I know this.
1. A broken parallel

When people ask about her it's an involuntary reaction to the sound of her name, the vowels form and whisper through the wind bringing with them the blissful memories we had created together. I smile and the warmth spreads throughout me, my cousin once said that my eyes light up like their crappy chrissy lights on their tree, I feel alive again and my heart and soul feel like they have once again returned to their rightful places within me. Then out of the blue, from the left field I can feel the stares and hear the words forming on everyone's lips,

"trial, trial, trial….."

"Teddy?"

"How are you holding up?"

"When is the next trial date dear?"

Just when you think you can trick your brain and your heart from being connected on the same subject, place one in the rational column and throw the other into a steel cage covered in cement with flashing warning signs about said subject, it only takes a few nosy old women who have had the same day every time they have awoken each morning for the past 20 years and think your crumbling world is really entertaining to break any cage, concrete, warning or rational argument you have made for the past year to a smouldering mess at your feet.

So, Just like I have done nearly every day for the last 14 months since this nightmare has begun, I smiled shyly at the women and told them the rehearsed sentenced I have used since that day when my world and that of my family's fell apart.

"Holding on thank you, the trial is in a few weeks just like the prophet stated on Wednesday. Thanks for the concern but I have to be somewhere to be"

Lying to people is easy I have found. One sad smile and reasons to show you are holding yourself together like some hero of the century and everyone just laps it up. They give you pitiful looks for reasons you can only guess, some will give in to physical contact and hug you, touch you telling you how brave you are and soon everything will be right and justice will be given. Others just nod and change the subject to your job, the friends avoid, the broken sink from two weeks ago, blah blah blah. Like I said, lying to others is simple; you tell them what they need to know so that they can keep their own sanity to the others in the room. It's just one big game.

It's taking that part of you that you moulded and shaped to your outer core that hides the large open wounds and holds in the fear and overbearing sorrow that suffocates you at 2am in the morning. That's how you become the winner in the game, convincing the real you staring back at this shell in the mirror that you are ok, you can keep going and holding on just that little bit longer until the wound starts to stich up a little.

I am yet to convince the old Teddy of this new outlook, he's smart and knows it's all bull shit anyway. Yep my life has resulted in referring to myself in the third person. God, I need serious help right. But it's how I have coped with this fucking mess, I hid old Teddy the emotionally attached one who was falling apart to nothing and replaced him with the "I am strong and holding on" Teddy to the public and my family. I just knew that the emotional wreck persona would kill me and everyone in the end, I needed a different approach if I was going to fix this and get her back.

She is only one who can piece me back together and heal me, I have to get her and I needed push the sobbing mess aside until she is lying next to me. We can fall apart together.

I know that it sounds messed up. Believe me I find myself questioning my own sanity on a daily basis. I know that when they come looking for answers they will see the broken man I see every morning , I wish I had all the facts from that night, what really happened, photographs, evidence to back up what I will say to cause more suffering to their life. I have none of it, I have the years of knowing both of them so well, sometimes better than others, I have what my whole heart and soul tells me is true and nothing no matter how many times I look at the evidence they have and the story they pieced together about the three of us.

It's wrong. It's fucking wrong, she could never do anything like they said and I stand by that to my bloody grave.

I knew Victorie since she was born. Beautiful since she came into the world with her golden locks that framed her mother's face and the warm blue eyes like the clear ocean her father gave her, Vicky was a piece of heaven that we were given. She was gentle and graceful and loved with every essence of her heart. She was my first friend. I spent so much time at her house with her at the beach, looking for shells and running through the waves while her parents watched on, we were practically attached at the hip at every family gathering, function and play date.

We wrote every day when I went to school and even though we were in separate houses at school when she finally followed the family tradition, we had meals together, she knew my friends and I knew hers and we were still close. So naturally the whole family thought we would get together, date, travel, marry, have kids and live the lives that all parents hope for their children.

We dated awhile and it was fun and really weird. Like dating your step sibling after living together since you were aged one kind of weird and she agreed. We had known each other to long for it to be romantic, how can you discover new things about your partner if you have known them since you took baths together as kids. I loved her. Loved everything about her, but like her twin brother slash best friend plus she had told me of her plans to see the world and try all the crazy adventures she talked about to me about. She never wanted the wife/mother role a year out of finishing school, I could never see her settling so soon either.

Vicky and I parted in that area with a laugh and she told me it was time for me to chase her, the only other person in my life who had wormed inside my life like Vicky had but she I had loved for completely different reasons.

Now this where things get really tangled in the story, to may points of view in an investigation can do that. Vicky and I parted happily ok, clear great. Because Vicky wasn't with me anymore when I was with her, she was off doing god knows what with whomever, it was her business to begin with. I was happy, like joyful the days before. We had moved in together and just unpacked loads of boxes and finished arguing where stuff was going and had christened the main room too. I remember it clearly, the day before it happened she smiled and said she was going out for a few hours to see her brother who had some of her mother's stuff for her. She kissed my right cheek and told me to cook something that wouldn't kill us and I threw a pillow at her head as she laughed at me. She came back two hours and 14 minutes later with a box of photos and an old blanket, we had dinner and we went through them. She cried and I placed them in frames and placed them next to the ones of my parents and we went to sleep.

They took her the next morning as she flipped pancakes wearing my old shirt, barged right through our door grabbed me and arrested her and dragged her away from me without warning. I was taken to the office and waited in the really uncomfortable interview room, wondering what in the bloody hell was going on. He came in 48 minutes later. Looked me dead in the eye and just asked me;

"Where were you between 11 and 3 pm yesterday?

I told him what he wanted to know. Every detail I could think of, I wanted this to be my job in a few years like my mother. When I finished I asked what had happened, why they took her like they did and he asked if she was with me. I told him the truth about her brother and the box and when she came back. I repeated my question to him, a little more forcefully and he didn't disappoint this time. With the pitying glance I will see regularly and one I could not even name at the time he told me;

"Yesterday Miss Victorie Weasley was found dead near Breakfast creek. Evidence has shown that Miss Layla Scott was the murderer; she is under arrest and is being transferred now. I am sorry Mr Lupin"

The world shifted and never stopped since that day. But there is more to the story then they painted of the Victorie, Layla and me, but more of Layla. She could never do that. I know this.


	2. Tears and laughter

"Cool colour, your hair. If you really wanted an effect you should add some wicked red tips to it. If you do yours red I might add purple to mine, might bright up this place a bit. What do you think?"

I met her on my first day of school on the train ride to the sorting. The other people in my carriage had asked me about Uncle Harry and any other embarrassing uncomfortable question about the war and had run off to spread the word to others on the train, so I was sitting by myself just watching the country fly past when she bounced in through the door.

I had spent so much time around Vicky who pretty much glided anywhere she went and Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny's kids who crashed around each other when they moved. She was different. She had so much life in her that you could feel it sweep out around her; it glowed in her brown eyes as she pointed at my bright blue hair and twirled her wavy brown around her finger as she sat across from me smiling with laughter at my expression.

We talked as we waited to arrive at school, she told me about her mum at home and her brother who could not believe she was a witch and how her dad had never been in her life so she figured it was from him she got the magical gift. I told her about my family and a brief history of the war so she got why people asked me strange questions all the time, really personal ones sometimes. She smiled sadly and stuck her tongue out at the next person who came in to talk to me about my extended family. She made me laugh.

We were both sorted into Ravenclaw, Layla sat next to me and told me she prayed she would be with me;

"You're really interesting. This is going to be really fun".

Boy was first year interesting. We were smart so work was easy and always finished extremely fast, so naturally we got into a lot of trouble to pass the free time. We spent a month in detention when Layla and I took several suits of armour and used paints she had her brother owl us to as she tried to argue when we got caught;

"it's a free expression of art. I felt like the castle needed to know that spring had sprung, it's really dark in here did you know?"

Yep one month, but it's because I laughed and said mine looked like it vomited snow cones and Layla snorted and almost fell off her chair. It was totally worth it. She loved to paint, to create, to wear strange things to the others but I think in the muggle world she would have been really awesome to everyone not just me.

I didn't mind, I didn't want to share her any way. I helped her add purple to her hair and she made me change my tips daily to express who I was feeling, she thought it was funny I just liked to see her smile at me when I was eleven.

We aced all exams and I had the best time at school then I thought I would. I would write to Vicky all the time and tell her about Layla and she couldn't wait to meet her, I sent photos of our pranks or just of us so Vicky knew who Layla was. Layla and I parted just after the journey back through the wall, I met her brother Jason and her mother and promised to write and meet here for next year with Vicky. I remember she laughed and hugged me goodbye before bouncing after Jason talking a mile an hour about what had happened in the year. She turned around to wave back at me before I found my Gran.

It makes no sense to me why they thought love murderer triangle. They took Layla away and I didn't see her till the first trial, which was probably good for her. I was a mess I didn't know what to do when I was told, my best friend since birth was dead and apparently the love of my life killed her in cold blood. But nothing compared to Bill and Fleur's reaction.

Vicky's mother broke down like me, she was lucky to have all the support of the family behind her, Bill wanted to kill Layla. His baby girl was dead, his angel and the wolf in him wanted blood as well as the father. It was hard to hold him back because you could see the pain in everyone's eyes that they wanted to do the same. The worst part was when Fleur pulled herself together for a second to slap me and scream if I knew, if I knew that the girl I brought to family dinners and holidays, polished my mother's ring to ask her to marry me had killed her daughter.

It was bad and it got worse. Percy walked over and asked if I helped her try to hide what she had done when she dumped Vicky near the creek. Talk about low right. I know now that it was a bad time for everyone that they had to ID their little girl who didn't look like that anymore according to the reports. I get it now.

But still they were my family, Vicky was my family. I loved her, I could never hurt her and I lost any self-control I had left at the time. I punched Percy, knocked him cold apparently {Vicky would have laughed} and just picked up my stuff and walked away. I remember waking up outside of my place and dragging myself in and not coming out until Ginny Physically dragged me to their place for dinner where Fleur was waiting to apologise over and over till she was a sobbing mess with Aunt Ginny.

After that I lived the same day over and over, I got up and went to work, came home and fell apart. Not really healthy but it worked for me at the time. I pretty much came back to the real life in the moon and stars, surrounded myself with the darkness and strong alcohol and some bad memories. I was at my worst when I started to remember the times the three of us hung out together and I could picture Vicky smiling with Layla about nothing and everything. I hit a real low when I recalled the memory of the rain dance off. I can still feel the rain on my face and see Layla smile at Vicky as she hummed a song that haunts my dreams still.


End file.
